Monitoring of ‘Arab/left’ Events

The university’s security staff, from at least 2008, kept a log of all activities on campus that had an Arab/Muslim theme. One page of this database, released by a request under the Data Protection Act, was entitled ‘Events on Campus’ [here]. The list included talks, seminars and stalls revolving around issues to do with Palestine, anti-terrorism and Middle Eastern arts & performance, as well as events organised by the ‘Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice’ as well as the renowned ‘Human Rights Law Centre’. The Head of Security, Gary Stevens, was responsible for the upkeep of this log. Throughout the leaks he consistently spells Rizwaan Sabir’s name as “RiSwaan Sabir” – this also suggests that Stevens, a former Police Officer, had some personal input into this ‘list’. Security have alsoadmitted that they regularly film student protesters but “rejected any notion that the university secretly filmed students on campus” however we beg to differ. We at (S.W.A.N) have released a video which was taken on May 14 at a protest calling for the reinstatement of Dr. Thornton and public inquiry that shows a covert security staff member filming protesters [see video]. The Palestinian Society have also complained of being singled out, their speakers are vetted and their events disrupted – in Jan 2011 a student reported a snow memorial spelling GAZA to be offensive and security duly destroyed it [video here].

This letter [here] shows how a student was threatened with expulsion for 1) publicly reading a letter explaining the objectives of a student protest (at a separate location to the protest) 2) for attending at lecture which allegedly overcrowded, which the student did attend but did not organise. Interesting no evidence was produced for either charge (it had to be obtained through a request under the Data Protection Act) – at one point the letter even states “there is no direct evidence that you took an active role in [the protest].” What’s more, the alleged overcrowding took place at an event on ‘Guantanemo Bay’ [see here], it was chaired by Hicham Yezza. This event is similar to that logged by University security [here] on June 4 which also involved similar participant’s. It is likely that both the event and protest (that the student was disciplined for) were logged on the previous page as they took place in January and early February. At the time the student was an active supporter the Free-Hich campaign and tellingly neither the organisers nor any other attendees were questioned about the overcrowding.

When Rizwaan Sabir filed an Freedom of Information request to the UoN to get more pages and details about this “events on campus” log, the university accused him of being “vexatious” and claimed that his requests “demonstrate[d] an obsession with this topic [ie, of his arrest & surrounding issues]”[here] by the ‘Governance Manager’, Sam Kingston. Kingston is ALSO the individual who told Dr Pauline Eadie – accused by Rod Thornton of malpractice in regards to Sabir herself – that the filing of FoI and Data Protection Requests on the ‘Nottingham Two’ anti-terror arrests was “ridiculous” and “hope[d] there won’t be anymore” [here]. This is all whilst the university claimed to the press, including to Newsnight on Monday (06.06.11) that they behaved “ethically, fairly and with transparency” [here].